Warbirds at North Weald

A couple of photos taken at North Weald in April when they held a warbirds event. Not billed as an airshow but a good day out all the same although the weather was a bit of a let down

Taken with a K-7 and a Tamron 17-50 which I purchased the week before S/H.







Rob

Beautiful birds, there is nothing better than the lines of a spitfire.

Is the first photo also a spitfire, an early model maybe?

Too bad of the gray weather btw

It certainly is Stefan, I just can't remember which model, I think it's a Mk 22 variant.

I could be(and probably am) wrong.

Well done for trying both of you

It's a Supermarine Seafire Mk.XVII SX336/G-KASX

The canopy looked strange, it's so round and that's why I had a problem with it.
Well learned something today

I was going to say that.

The colours are a give-away. The grey is so that it would blend into the sea when viewed from above.

HG has the right mark for the teardrop canopy on the Spitfire. It was the later models which had it.

Thanks Oggy, I knew it was a Griffin powered one but I tend to get a little lost after the Mk.IX.

Must get that book out again sometime....

....if I can find it!

Oh yes, the Seafire was just a Spit with a hook, originally, by this point the airframe and undercarriage had been beefed up to cope with deck landings. Apart from that it's just another beautiful Spitfire variant.

The bubble canopy was introduced to improve rearward visibility, hence it improved the survival odds. It also caused a reduction of "wet" area behind the center of pressure, hence decreasing yaw stability. So, the rudder and fin area was increased to compensate. That then increased the weight at the far end of the lever, decreasing pitch rate.

So, to simplify everything, when you have a sound design like the Spitfire, it is really very hard to improve on it.

The best Spitfires were the Mk. V and Mk. IX versions. After that, every increase in HP was met with an increase in weight that almost defeated the "improvements" that were applied.

I was talking about the front window, that's round. I believe non of the spitfires had that. Just looked up some photos of various models and couldn't find one at least.

Could the seafire also fold her wings or not?

I think the curved screen was part of the re-designed cockpit, as for folding wings, I believe the seafire did have them on later models, it was just the wing tip on early ones that folded,AFAIK.

Is there any other sort?

100% agree.....

and moving the subject sideways slightly, lovely though the Merlin marks sound I don't think anything beats the sound of a Griffon Spitfire at full bore

Nice images Rob

Did you ever hear a Lockheed P-38 Lightning at full throttle for take-off?

That would make you forget the Griffon. The P-38 has two "Americanized" Merlin built by Packard. You hear that once and you never forget it.

I like the second photo...great detail on those planes..

I thought the discussion was about Spitfires (and Seafires)
But I guess yes the P-38 would sound nice, not quite as majestic as a Lancaster on take off though